DriverFinder – We Make Drivers Work for YouPC Driver Tips & Tweaks to Optimize Your PC

Driver updates normally come as one, often big, single file. If the driver file has the extension “.exe”, that means the driver file is a self-installing driver file or a self-extracting driver file. Simply double-click the driver file to execute the driver installation process. Follow the instructions of the installation program to complete the hardware driver installation. A reboot might be required on the end of the driver installation.

In the case of a self-extracting driver file, executing the “.exe” file will result in the extraction of the compressed driver files. You often need to specify a destination for the driver file extraction. Once the files are extracted, you will see the driver files that are required to install the driver update.

However, if the driver update file has a “.zip” or “.rar” extension, you need to manually uncompress the driver files. Windows supports the “.zip” extension, but if required get a program like 7-Zip to uncompress the driver files.

Within the folder with the driver files, you would typically find a driver installation program. In most cases it will be called “setup.exe” or “install.exe”, but other program files with the “.exe” extension are also possible. Again, simply double-click these installer programs to install the hardware driver update. An installation wizard will guide you through the driver install process.

In the example below the “.exe” file is called “DPInst64.exe”.

Note: Make sure that you are logged in with Administrative rights when you want to install a driver in Windows Vista or Windows 7. Another option is to right-click the “.exe” file and in the popup menu, select Run as Administrator.

If there is no file with the “.exe” extension in the folder with driver files, you will need to manually install the driver update.

Installing Drivers in Vista and Windows 7

Open the Control Panel from the Windows Start menu. In the Control Panel, select Hardware and Sound. Next, select Device Manager. If the UAC message comes up, click the Continue button.

In the Device Manager, select the device for which you want to update the drivers. Right-click the device, and in the popup menu select Update Driver Software.

In the next screen, select Browse my computer for driver software. Click the Browse button, and select the location where you extracted the driver files.

After you selected the driver file location, click the Next button to update the drivers.

Installing Drivers in Windows XP

In Windows XP the steps to install a hardware driver update manually are almost the same, but the screens and selections differ a bit.

In the Start menu, select the Control Panel. Next, select Printers and Other Hardware. Next, select System in the left-hand panel (If you use the classic view, you can click System immediately).

In the System Properties window, select the Hardware tab. Next, click the Device Manager button.

In the Device Manager, select the device for which you want to update the drivers. Right-click the device, and in the popup menu select Update Driver.

In the Hardware Update Wizard, select the option “No, not this time”, and click Next.

In the next screen, select “Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)”, and then click Next again.

Then select “Don’t search, I will choose the driver to install”, and click Next again. Now you need to select the hardware category to which your device belongs, and click Next. If you do not know the category, simply select the default Show All Devices.

In the next screen, select the Have Disk button.

The Hardware Update Wizard will now show an Install From Disk window, where you need to click the Browse button.

Using the file browser, you will now navigate to the location where you extracted the driver update files. The file browser will look for a file with the “.inf” extension.

Once you have selected the file with the “.inf” extension, you click the Open button and the click the OK button. Windows will then show you the list of devices supported by the driver update, from which you need to select your device. Then click Next to proceed with the driver installation. When the driver installation is finished, click the Finish button.

Originally established in 1996, AOpen is a global leading electronics manufacturer that specializes in computers and computer components. Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, the company produces a rich line of products that range from motherboards to optical disk drives. As a subsidiary of Acer, it also manufactures a nice variety of input devices. The primary focus of AOpen focus is to deliver IT solutions based on energy-efficient standards.

AOpen is perhaps best known for its MoDT (Mobile on Desktop), which was first launched in 2004. MoDT is a solution that incorporates Intel’s Pentium M platform on traditional desktop motherboards. Since the Pentium 4 and several other NetBurst processors proved to be less energy efficient at this time, a number of manufacturers created desktop motherboards for the popular mobile Pentium M platform, with AOpen being one of the very first. AOpen MoDT modules offer all the functionality of traditional computers while consuming far less energy at a faction of the cost.

In the summer of 2007, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) laid out a challenge to PC manufacturers with stricter rules for achieving Energy Star qualification. The EPA has goals of attaining 40% compliancy by 2010 and 80% by 2014. While this is a demanding and time strenuous request, AOpen is more than up for the challenge.

From the same labs that birthed AOpen’s MoDT solutions in 2004, the company has stepped up into a leadership role, going above and beyond industry standards. The manufacturer is consistently scoring in high customer satisfaction, due in large part to its open architecture and open implementation development philosophies that place a strong emphasis on adaptability and compatibility. Going to great lengths to help its partners sustain business continuity, the company has a dedicated staff for upgrading and replacing parts as well as a team committed to the continuous evolution of AOpen MoDT systems.

Download AOpen Drivers

Originally established in 1985, Alliance Semiconductor Corporation is a company that designs and manufactures memory and memory-intensive logic products. Alliance Semiconductor also spent a portion of their history selling video chipsets for personal computers. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Alliance Semiconductor has garnered a worldwide reach with state of the art design centers in Santa Clara as well as Bangalore and Hyderabad, India.

Over the years, Alliance Semiconductor has been able to remain afloat in the market with an extensive portfolio of products and significant market demand for their ProMotion line. The Alliance Semiconductor ProMotion product line consists of various types of RAM that include DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory), SRAM (Static Random Access Memory) and PSRAM (Pseudo SRAM) as well as embedded memory, Flash memory and logic solutions. The company no longer produces graphics controllers for video card and OEM computer system vendors, however, they have made a set of generic drivers available to the public, a move that was done to show courtesy to its loyal vendors. While these Alliance Semiconductor ProMotion drivers can be obtained from the company website, the manufacturer is reminding customers that the drivers are not updated or otherwise supported in anyway.

In the beginning of 2005, Alliance Semiconductor made it a priority to transition its focus from being a company targeting the semiconductor market and investing in emerging entities to one dedicated to maximizing return to its shareholders. Now focused on managing its short-term investments, Alliance states that the transformation is complete. Always utilizing the best business practices, in July 2007 the company paid out a special cash dividend of $3.75 per share to its shareholders along with an additional $0.25 per share in April of 2008. As of now, the Alliance Semiconductor Board of Directors is committed to evaluating a number of alternatives to better determine the company’s direction for the future.

Download Alliance Semiconductor Corporation Drivers

Albatron is a company that specializes in embedded solutions for application and industrial PC components. Although the manufacturer became internationally known in 2002, the actual birth of this company dates back to 1984. Beginning as Chun Yun Electronics, the company primarily functioned as a display manufacturer, producing television sets, plasma displays, rear projection systems and wide-screen multimedia monitors. The changing of the name to Albatron signified the emergence of a new product line and direction.

In the beginning of 2002, Albatron formed a new IT products division and rolled out a whole new range of products. Its IT division is compromised of two teams: one dedicated to motherboards, the other focused on graphic cards. Albratron graphic cards have made significant gains in a highly competitive market, releasing 10 new high quality cards in the first half of 2002 alone. Note to be outdone was the Albatron motherboard team which launched 14 new models around the same time.

Fast growing success with its superior quality, high-end VGA cards resulted in a spin off in the new ABT subsidiary. This division is committed to delivering high-performance Albatron VGA cards with components of the highest quality for PC enthusiasts. Still in development, these cards are slated to offer far more than an overclocked NVIDIA reference card with the addition of a fancy fan. Dubbed as ABT Ultra Enthusiast, Albatron reports that the new cards will be custom designed from the ground up, featuring all new durable components coupled with a precision PCB design able to withstand the most demanding graphics applications.

Albatron continues to supply its global community of users with a full lineup of the latest AMD and Intel-based motherboards as well industry leading NVIDIA-based VGA cards. Innovation and quality products have allowed the company to enjoy continuous success in Australia, Japan, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The future roll out of the new Albratron VGA cards is one that will likely help the manufacturer seize significant market shares in other regions as well.

Download Albatron Drivers

Headquartered in Milpitas, California with several offices across the world, Adaptec is a computer hardware manufacture that specializes in host adapters for interconnecting computers and storage devices. With more than 26 years experience in the storage I/O marketplace, the company is a leading provider of storage hardware and software solutions. Adaptec products are designed to interface with USB, Firewire, FibreChannel, SCSI, iSCSI and Serial ATA as well as audio and video. Adaptec RAID controllers consist of an impressive lineup that provides customers with solutions to enhance performance, reliability and manageability in their IT environments.

Adaptec has been involved in many initiatives during its near three decade tenor. This includes the creation of the popular Easy CD Creator, a CD/DVD burning software package bundled with many earlier CD/DVD writers. Though the product is now obsolete, it is still supported by Roxio, an Adaptec spinoff. The company recently made significant waves in the SAN market with the introduction of its dedicated SAS-based stored appliance. This Adaptec RAID controller provides high-performance, cost-efficient, highly reliable storage for customers with mission-critical application servers. Always receiving industry recognition, Adaptec was honored in 2008 as InfoWorld named its Snap Server 720i with the highly coveted “Best Entry-Level SAN.”

A long-time leader in the data storage industry, Adaptec actively participates in a number of storage market organizations committed to setting new standards within the marketplace. Some of the most notable entities include the SATA-IO (Serial ATA International Organization) and the STA (SCSI Trade Association) among others. Adaptec is also a certified member of the Green Grid, a global consortium focused on enhancing energy efficiency in IT data centers and business computing ecosystems. When considering the success the company has achieved, one can only assume that Adaptec’s Green Power initiative will play a major role in reducing energy consumption in some of today’s major markets.

Download Adaptec Drivers

Originally founded in 1976, Acer Incorporated is a global manufacturer of electronics. They may proudly boast that they are the largest franchised retail computer chain in Taipei, Taiwan. Acer is also one of the largest computer manufacturers in the world, coming in third behind HP and Dell. The Acer product line is impressive, consisting of desktops, laptops, PDAs, network servers, storage facilities, peripherals, and displays for government, education, corporate and home users.

From humble beginnings, Acer started with $25,000 in capital and a mere 11 employees. Today, the manufacturer has the reach to market its IT products to customers across the world. Their business model consists of partnerships with industry-leading companies, offering the flexibility needed to conform to the fast changing IT market trends. The Acer infrastructure is designed to enable further success by minimizing operating expense and increasing profitability.

Acer branched off their manufacturing operation as Winstron Corporation in 2000, placing an emphasis on the branding business. Utilizing the best distribution channels to support the sales of its massive product lines, the company quickly became a worldwide entity. By 2002, Acer employed an estimated 39,000 people, supporting distributors and vendors in more than 100 countries. That same year, the manufacturer’s revenues reach $12.9 billion. Acer continued to grow at a rapid rate and by 2005, the company had approximately 7,800 employees located throughout the world. In 2008, the company reached another milestone as the sale of Acer notebook computers surpassed both Dell and HP. Although the company’s North American market share has declined over the past several years, its European share has continued to climb considerably.

Acer’s success in the computer manufacturer market is attributed to its commanding position in the Acer Group. This family consists of Acer, eMachines, Gateway and Packard Bell. A successful merger with Gateway in 2007 and Packard Bell in 2008 completed the group’s global footprint, giving the company the ability further strengthen its presence across the United States, Europe and beyond.

Download Acer Incorporated Drivers

As a fabless semiconductor company, 3DLABS Semiconductor manufactures the DMS product line of fully programmable media-rich processors geared towards the embedded and handheld markets.

Based in Sunnyvale, California, the company was established from a buy-out of Dupont Pixel Systems in 1994, the company later went public in 1996. As an earlier pioneer in delivering 3D graphics to the personal computer, 3DLADS processors helped revolutionize the market with the GLINT 300SX graphics processor, the industry’s first single-chip 3D-enabled graphics device. The company continued its innovative ways with Gamma, the first-chip graphics geometry designed for the PC, and catered to budgeting customers with Permedia, the first entry-level priced OpenGL accelerator. Formerly a member of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board, 3DLABS played an integral role in the development of OpenGL 2.0 and the continuous evolution of the OpenGL API.

3DLABS DMS processors are built on a multi-core architecture. This low-power structure includes dual ARM cores for handling basic CPU tasks along with a fully programmable SIMD array processor to handle the heavy lifting for demanding media processing tasks such as 2D and 3D graphics, image processing and floating point. The first 3DLABS DMS processor was launched in November of 2006, offering support for devices equipped with embedded Linux 2.6.

With the introduction of DMS processors, 3DLABS made the decision to halt the development of its workstation graphics cards for the PC. Instead, the company has totally committed its focus to its low-power, media-rich application processors. While the manufacturer no longer develops or sells PC graphics cards, it still offers support for legacy graphics cards under warranty conditions. A number of 3DLABS drivers can be downloaded from the company website.

It has been a long and prosperous road for 3DLABS and its feature-rich product line. As technology continues to evolve, this company is sure to play a leading role deploying additional lines of innovative products.

Download 3DLABS Semiconductor Drivers

Originally founded in 1994 and based in San Jose, California, 3Dfx Interactive was a company that manufactured graphics accelerator chips and arcade game subsystems. While the company introduced various products, its claim to fame was the Voodoo Graphics processor line, which is still used in a wide variety of products today.

3Dfx earned notoriety is due to its success in the arcade game market. In those days, arcades were the best place to witness the latest innovations in 3D gaming technology firsthand. The first game the 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics card was implemented in was Ice Home Run Derby. Later in the same year, the company made its presence known in other popular titles that included Atari’s San Francisco Rush and Wayne Gretzy’s 3D Hockey. 3Dfx received a considerable amount of attention from the media due to the instant popularity of these graphically enhanced titles. Unfortunately, the company’s demise would come just four short years later.

The 3dfx Voodoo Graphics chip had an impressive run, ranging from the VooDoo Graphics PCI (VooDoo 1) all the way up to the VooDoo 5 series. Heading into the millennium, the company fell on hard financial times and its demise seemed imminent. Tied up in legal issues and bankruptcy proceedings, 3dfx was purchased and acquired by leading graphics card manufacturer Nvidia in 2000. Announcing that it would not provide support for 3dfx products, support for 3dfx drivers and Voodoo hardware has since been handled by various third-parties.

The fall of 3dfx can be attributed to bad business practices and much stiffer competition on the market. Sadly, the company has a number of products that failed to be released due to the Nvidia acquisition. Fortunately, you can still get support for your 3dfx drivers and files from a number of credible sources on the web.

Download 3Dfx Drivers

People who have used Windows a bit longer are familiar with the concept of hardware and device drivers. Device drivers are critical software components that make sure your computer can communicate with all hardware devices.

As an example, without a printer driver,  your printer and computer cannot relate to each other and thus, you cannot print anything.

Now, by default, Windows supports a lot of hardware, but not ALL hardware. A lot of drivers are available for Windows XP, and the same is true for Windows Vista. Windows 7 now claims to support even more hardware by default, but that does not mean things will always work with the default drivers.

Controlling how devices are installed in Windows 7 can help solve driver problems. Instead of using the default drivers, you can instruct Windows 7 to handle device installation in a less automated way, giving you control about the specific driver to install.

Basically, you want to tell Windows 7 which drivers to use specifically and not just any ‘default driver’.

Firstly, open the Control Panel, and then select View devices and printers under the heading Hardware and Sound.

Now right-click your computer icon and in the pop-up menu, select Device installation settings, as shown below.

This will bring up the Device Installations Settings dialog box, which controls how the drivers from Windows Update are used on your Windows 7 computer.

Assuming you want to disable the use of drivers from Windows Update, change the default section from Yes, do this automatically (recommended) to No, let me choose what to do.

Next, select Never install driver software from Windows Update.

Click Save Changes to save the new settings.

Do keep in mind that this should only be used if the driver that is installed by Windows Update is giving you problems and you want to manually install a different driver. Good luck!

>>> Download Windows 7 Drivers

In keeping with its goal of always providing the best for its clients, DriverFinder is Windows® 7 compatible.

San Francisco, CA – December 3, 2009 — DriverFinder, the fastest, safest, and easiest way to update your device drivers, is Windows® 7 compatible.

People who want to upgrade to the latest Windows® 7 operating system, can do so knowing that they can easily find compatible drivers using DriverFinder. Further, the program can be used on both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

The 64-bit architecture allows users to address and use over 4GB of RAM (memory) in Windows®. With memory becoming cheaper and cheaper, more computers come with larger amounts of memory. As a result, 64-bit versions of Windows® 7 come pre-installed.

In the past, 64-bit versions of drivers have always been problematic due to limited use of these architectures in Windows® XP and Vista. Since Windows® 7 seems to be more easily adopted by users, hardware manufacturers are expected to provide more 64-bit driver versions.

And as such, you need a driver update utility such as DriverFinder to detect and find those 64-bit drivers for you.

Here are the other operating systems supported by DriverFinder:
Windows 2000, Windows XP (32- and 64-bit) and Windows Vista (32- and 64-bit).

About DriverFinderPro.com
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DriverFinder is a product of DeskToolsSoft.

About DeskToolsSoft, Inc.
Although launched officially in 2009, DeskToolsSoft is backed by almost 20 years of experience in the IT industry. The company was established with one aim: to provide desktop utilities that do exactly what ‘it says on the box’; namely, to optimize computers on various, specific levels so that users get the most performance out of their machines. The DeskToolsSoft goal is not only to produce software to help clients with system maintenance but to produce software that UPLIFTS their computing experience.

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